Innholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2024 i National Geographic History

Ancient Egypt’s most iconic structures are not its temples, but its tombs—from the towering Pyramids at Giza to the subterranean chambers in the Valley of the Kings. Egypt’s might rose and fell between the Old and New Kingdoms, and the resting places of its pharaohs followed suit. The Pyramids at Giza were built during the Old Kingdom (2575 to 2150 B.C.). During the 4th dynasty, Pharaohs Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure built massive skyscraping tombs that combined drama with, at first, safe resting places for the pharaohs. But their sheer size undid their security over time. Tomb robbers were able to break in and loot them. A thousand years later, the New Kingdom (1539 to 1075 B.C.) arose, and Egypt enjoyed a period of great prosperity and power. The kings of…

To excavate and adorn the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, special corps of artisans and stonemasons formed a community in the village of Deir el Medina. They were responsible for the excavation and decoration of the pharaohs’ tombs. After a pharaoh died, the vizier would choose a suitable site for the next pharaoh’s tomb so that work could commence. When Seti I came to power around 1290 B.C., work began on his royal tomb. Stonecutters from Deir el Medina began excavating the tomb, carving out long corridors and multiple chambers in the limestone. As chambers were finished, artists began creating adornments. In the 18th dynasty, tombs often only featured painted murals, but after the reign of Horemheb (1319 to 1292 B.C.), many featured painted reliefs. These vibrant works…

Egyptian pharaohs were not meant to rest in peace when they entered the afterlife. In the New Kingdom, monarchs went on a journey after their death. The artwork on their tomb walls often reflected each one’s personal quest. Religious shifts during the New Kingdom, most notably during the reign of Akhenaten, were reflected in the pharaohs’ tombs as different texts, scenes, and deities received emphasis. During the reign of the Rames-side kings in the 19th dynasty, burial chambers were often adorned with scenes from several different funerary texts that would chronicle the deceased pharaoh’s progress through the 12 stages of the underworld, mirroring the sun god Amun-Re’s journey through the 12 hours of the night. In order to ensure that divine harmony is maintained, the pharaoh must pass through all…

In 1920, a collection of 285 gold objects was discovered in the town of Aliseda in Cáceres, Spain. The objects are now on display at the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid. The treasure, made by a local workshop at the end of the seventh century B.C., shows how Phoenician goldsmithing techniques such as filigree and granulation had been adopted by the artisans of Tartessos. The iconography depicted in the pieces reflects the mythology and religion of the eastern Mediterranean as well as that of the ancient Atlantic world. Mediterranean Mix of Styles Phoenician Deities Egyptian Style…

It may have been a summer’s day in the ninth century B.C. when a fire erupted in a dwelling in what is now eastern England. Raised on wooden stakes over a wide, sluggish stream, the small houses alongside it were soon engulfed in flames. Residents had little chance to salvage their belongings. Burning roofs collapsed into the cottages, which in turn collapsed into the murky waters below, together with all their contents. The flames were extinguished, the debris sank deep into the mud, and the charred remains of tools, animal bones, food, textiles, and timbers were encased in the fluvial silt of East Anglia for nearly 3,000 years. This ninth-century B.C. catastrophe turned into a 20th-century A.D. blessing when archaeologists found the remains of this community at a place called…

Restoration of the ceiling of Egypt’s Temple of Esna has revealed a vibrant display: full-color reliefs of the zodiac, depictions of constellations and planets, and hieroglyphic inscriptions that could unlock some of the meanings behind these celestial images. What obscures, it turns out, can also protect: “Layers of soot and dirt that accumulated over nearly 2,000 years enabled this remarkable state of preservation,” Christian Leitz, who oversaw the project, told History. Over five years, a team of 30 people worked together on the joint project of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, represented by Hisham El-Leithy, and the University of Tübingen in Germany. They revealed vibrant color still intact after millennia. Highlights include a complete set of zodiac signs and a divine depiction of the annual flooding of the…

The wadi where the Valley of the Kings is located sits at the foot of a distinctively shaped mountain. Today it is known as el-Qurn (Arabic for “the horn”), but the ancient Egyptians called it ta dehent (meaning “the peak”). Observed from the entrance in the Valley of the Kings, the mountaintop looks remarkably like a pyramid, similar to the famous structures at Giza built more than a thousand years earlier to house pharaohs of the Old Kingdom. Ancient Egyptians associated this sacred geometry with the solar god Re, who played a key role in the afterlife. The surrounding area was also sacred to the goddess Hathor and the cobra goddess Meretseger. Both deities were protectors of the dead and watched over those who were buried. The Valley of the…

Despite the wealth of knowledge about the pharaohs’ tombs and their construction, researchers know relatively little about the funerals of royalty. The main source of information comes from the decoration of the tombs, and much of that is devoted to what happens to a pharaoh in the afterlife, but not before. Researchers have looked to the funerals of nobles and the wealthy to reconstruct what a pharaoh’s funeral must have been like. Following mummification, the pharaoh’s body would be taken to its tomb. A mural on the eastern wall of Tutankhamun’s burial chamber shows such a procession. A group of 12 mourners dressed in white linen pull a sledge bearing the king’s coffin to the Valley of the Kings. Another mural, this one on the burial chamber’s north wall, takes…

Around 2,500 years ago, a young prince sat under a bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya (northern India). His name was Siddhartha Gautama, and he was on a spiritual quest. According to tradition, he found enlightenment under that tree, achieving unparalleled wisdom and insight into existence. He became known as the Buddha, which means “awakened” or “the enlightened one,” and went on to found one of the world’s great faiths. World of the Buddha Artworks representing the Buddha often depict a calm, serene figure, but he and his teachings were disrupters. Buddhism not only broke with existing religious tradition in southern Asia, it also abandoned the very idea of tradition as a source of authority. This revolutionary message of the Buddha is better understood through the historical context of India’s Vedic…

In the Old Kingdom, pharaohs often had a funerary temple attached directly to their pyramids. These sites were dedicated exclusively to the funerary cult of a pharaoh. New Kingdom rulers also built mortuary temples, but they chose to separate them from their tombs. Like the Valley of the Kings, they were located on the western bank of the Nile, but they were closer to cultivated areas. Each new temple was incorporated into the Beautiful Festival of the Valley, a major celebration of the harvest. During the festival, statues of Thebes’s divine triad—Amun-Re, his consort Mut, and his son Khonsu—would be brought to the temples to transmit their revitalizing power to the deceased. Mortuary temples served an important cosmic purpose by regenerating the deceased pharaoh’s rule for eternity; hence each temple…

The tombs themselves were more than just resting places. They were also the conduits for the deceased to travel to the Amduat, or afterlife. The chambers and the artworks adorning them were deliberately placed to facilitate this process. Often they aligned with the cardinal directions on the compass, but these alignments would change over time. During the 18th dynasty, the tomb’s symbolic orientation aligned the main corridor in a north-south direction, with the entrance at the south and the funerary chamber at the north. This association was often symbolic and rarely lined up with the actual orientation of the tomb. To make the associations clear, the walls of the burial chamber would include four niches, each one containing a magic brick specifying the cardinal direction that each wall represented. In…

To this day, historians can’t fully explain the mysterious disappearance of the thriving ancient society of Tartessos. New questions arise as excavations reveal more about the advanced, multicultural civilization that seemingly vanished overnight. Rising to power along the southern coast of the Iberian Peninsula, Tartessos is believed to have strong ties to a group of seafaring traders, the Phoenicians, who first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula in the 10th century B.C. They originally hailed from modern-day Lebanon, Syria, and northern Israel and were known across the Mediterranean as skilled sailors and expert merchants. Given the name “Phoenician” by the Greeks for the exquisite purple dye they crafted, they never created a unified kingdom. Tartessos is believed to be the resulting outgrowth of Phoenician culture combined with the Indigenous culture of…

Rugged. Fearsome. Authoritative. All three words have been used to describe Kamehameha I, the first king of the unified, if short-lived, Kingdom of Hawai‘i. Living up to his name’s promise—it can be translated as “the one set apart”—Kamehameha broke the mold of his native Hawaiian aristocracy in the late 18th century, pursuing ambitions that put him in power not of a single clan or island but an entire Pacific nation composed of once independent islands. Devoted to his people’s war god, Kamehameha was extolled for his reverence, physical size and strength, military savvy, and bravery in battle. But it would take more than muscle—and modern Western weaponry—to bring together these separate islands into a united Kingdom of Hawai‘i. Peppered with prophecies and legends, his life story is a compelling history…